News In Brief

Cementing its position as a high-tech superpower, America Online announced it had successfully negotiated the purchase of Netscape Communications for $4.21 billion. Net- scape, whose software popularized the Internet, would cease to exist as an independent entity and function as an AOL division, the announcement said.

Earlier estimates of the US gross domestic product for the July-September quarter were too conservative, the Commerce Department said. But it also announced that corporate profits for the period fell 1.8 percent, the third such decline in the past year - a factor that analysts said raised questions about the sustainability of the latest stock market rally. The Commerce Department said the broad measure of overall economic activity grew at a 3.9 percent rate instead of the 3.3 percent reported last month.

US troop strength in Asia will be kept at 100,000 "for the foreseeable future," even if concerns over North Korean nuclear weapons development are resolved and the peninsula is reunified, a new Pentagon review on regional security said. Since the last such review, in 1995, the region has experienced economic decline in several key countries and nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, analysts noted.

CBS said it had not yet been served with a subpoena for un-edited "60 Minutes" videotape showing Dr. Jack Kevorkian administering a lethal injection to a terminally ill patient. Oakland County, Mich., prosecutors announced the subpoena but said more investigation was needed before any charges against Kevorkian would be filed. Meanwhile, Gov. John Engler's office said the state would pursue a charge of practicing medicine without a license against the retired pathologist. Regulators suspended his license in 1991.

Anti-Semitism is declining in the US, except among blacks, a new survey indicated. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said its findings showed blacks were almost four times as likely as whites to hold anti-Jewish views. ADL director Abraham Foxman blamed Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan for promoting such sentiments. Spokesmen for both Farrakhan and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People disputed the ADL findings.